The lies of capitalist fish-farming

The biological and ecological impacts of salmon farming are disastrous. Far from the soft, nature-resilient image that fish farming attempts to paint, this is a destructive industry that pours millions of barrels of pesticides and waste into waterways and sea lochs. Consumers are sold a lie about the sustainability of the fish, and the environment pays the price.

Sea lice are abundant in salmon farms and spread to non-farmed fish stocks in the vicinity. Infected fish which cannot be saved are often illegally dumped. Pesticides and antibiotics go directly into waterways untreated. The downstream release of nitrogen, phosphorous and organic carbon from fish farming in Norway alone may be the equivalent of between that from 20 and 30 million people.

Seafood, by value, is the most traded food commodity worldwide, and only a few species dominate that market. One third of all seafood is catfish, salmon, shrimp, and tilapia, and 90% of that is farmed.

Farmed salmon are fed on a diet of minced stock fish. It relies on tonnes of pelagic fish (those that live at mid-depth in oceans) like mackerel, sardines and anchovies. Those fish form big proportions of the bulk of protein in the diets of many humans in South America and West Africa, but maybe one quarter of catches go towards producing fish oil for feed in Norwegian fish farms alone.

The Norwegian farms have recently attracted coverage. However, the issue isn’t limited to Norway. What applies there, applies in Scotland and the world over.

The impact of the releases of nitrogen, phosphorous and organic carbon, predominantly from feed pellets, is an increase in phytoplankton that can lead to repeated large algal blooms which wreak havoc on marine ecosystems. They massively deplete oxygenation of bodies of water, many of which are semi enclosed.

While there is a moratorium on new farms in Scotland, and there has been a run of rejected applications in Norway, the global trend is that these farms will increase in size and number.

In Chile, the second largest producer of salmon after Norway, the salmoneras, or salmon farms have been cited by a United Nations special rapporteur as one of the main threats to Chilean waterways. They are creating aquatic death zones.

Salmon are not a native species in South America. They were imported by Norway in the 1980s, and in the 2020s now form the largest non-mining part of the Chilean export market. Chilean salmon farming is more loosely regulated thast Norwegian salmon farming, and uses nearly 500 time as much antibiotics, approximately 350kg, most of which ends up in environment.

Chile’s new far right government, under President José Kast, looks set to water down or repeal recent legislation to tackle the environmental impacts of aquaculture. Nova Austral, one of the largest fish farming firms, was fined multiple times under the legislation.

AquaChile, another of the farmed fish giants in Chile, has a large feed factory in the de Los Lagos region, an area of made up of national parks and protected indigenous land.

If aquaculture were regulated in Scotland even as tightly as terrestrial farming, most of the fish farms would be facing at least serious fines, or closure due to repeated breaches. But they are still regularly flouting the lax controls that are in place.

The pelagic fish that are used to make fish oil to feed to farmed salmon provide, via smaller portion sizes, higher yields or similar yields of micronutrients than the salmon they are fed to. Over one million tonnes of mackerel in excess of scientific recommendations have been vacuumed from the sea. If the current trend continues many pelagic stocks, including mackerel, will be depleted so far as to go into terminal decline. On current predictions, quotas need to be reduced by three quarters immediately to prevent a collapse of marine ecosystems reliant on the migrations of the fish.

Transformation of how we produce food is a vital part of tackling the ever-growing issue of man-made climate change.

Workers in these sectors have a vital role to play, many work in poor conditions, for low pay. In Chile dozens of workers have been killed on the farms.

Some types of aquacultures should continue. Fish protein makes up a dominant proportion of some coastal communities’ diets and cannot be immediately replaced. And there are some alternatives to aquaculture that are less harmful, or even beneficial, to marine ecosystems. Aquatic food production can mean much lower levels of CO2 per g of protein than terrestrial farming.

Seaweed, mussels, and oysters for example, can remove excess carbon and improve carbon cycles. Non-animal aquatic food like seaweed and kelp can be important in transforming food production.

Oysters, mussels, scallops and similar shellfish clean the waterways in which they are grown, and require no extra feed. Maintenance and management of facilities is required to ensure avoidance of contamination.

More modestly, just moving away from fish oil based feed can reduce greatly the numbers of pelagic fish that are caught.

The intensive nature and drive for profit in fish-farming has contributed greatly to the destructive impacts. But while the balance of forces remains stronger on the side of capital it seems less and less likely that the change required will be implemented.